This f*cking election. A babble tower.
posted by digaman on Nov 2, 2008 - 100 comments

Palin for 2012? She's popular with conservatives, and even before any potential makeover 6 out of 10 evangelicals think she is experienced enough to be president. She'd potentially get the Huckabee evangelical vote in the primaries *and* the talk radio wing. If Obama succeeds in taking moderates, the evangelical and talk radio wings will only be stronger. And the GOP would appear to already be talking about it.
posted by jaduncan on Oct 24, 2008 - 317 comments

The Chicago Tribune has been a bastion of Republican endorsements, having consistently endorsed every single Republican presidential nominee since it was founded in 1847. One of its earliest managing editors, Joseph Medill, was a founder of the Republican Party. Today, it endorsed its first Democratic presidential candidate in its 161-year history. And it certainly did not do so halfheartedly. [more inside]
posted by WCityMike on Oct 17, 2008 - 65 comments

Tom Davis Gives Up (SLNYT). “Tell them about the important work we’re doing while Rome burns,” he said. A candid accounting of American politics from a member of the GOP disillusioned with both sides of the aisle and an overview of how he became that way.
posted by schroedinger on Oct 4, 2008 - 39 comments

Cross another item off of President Bush's to-do list before he leaves the White House: hobbling the Endangered Species Act and allowing federal agencies to gauge the environmental impact of their projects for themselves. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said the changes were needed to ensure that the ESA would not be used as a "back door" to regulate greenhouse gases.
posted by digaman on Aug 11, 2008 - 50 comments

This little news story might be slightly damaging to John McCain's campaign. You know how the press lets stuff like this slide. uno dos tres cuatro cinco sex?
posted by chuckdarwin on Feb 21, 2008 - 250 comments

McHenry and his "roommates" -- GOP Rep Patrick McHenry (NC), co-owner of a DC home with Scott G. Stewart, former chair of the College Republican Nat'l Cttee (and bilker of many senior citizens), received a DC home-ownership reduction improperly. McHenry's actual home in North Carolina was apparently also home to quite a collection of young men: (convicted fraudulent voter) Michael Aaron Lay, Neil Everett Capano, Matthew Allen Hamilton, and (multiple violations, including "death by vehicle") Jason Jent Deans. Also, McHenry's 04 consultant Ralph Gonzales was one of the men involved in a recent FL murder/suicide, and links to Robert Drake, the killer (political work in NC and escort service connections), are still being documented. Stay tuned! [more inside]
posted by amberglow on Sep 28, 2007 - 67 comments

GOP Senator Larry Craig arrested in 'bathroom incident' --and pleads guilty. ... At one point during the interview, Craig handed the plainclothes sergeant who arrested him a business card that identified him as a U.S. Senator and said, “What do you think about that?” ... He's denied similar stories in the past.
posted by amberglow on Aug 27, 2007 - 519 comments

Late Night Shots is an "invitation-only" social networking site for elite GOP youth of Washington, DC that the late Steve Gilliard mockingly described as "the best and whitest." The Wonkette blog has devoted an entire section to the site that documents Late Night Shots' racism, date rape, anti-Islamic prejudice, and incest with second cousins, at least until Wonkette's editor started getting invited to their parties. The founder of Late Night Shots, Reed Landry, plans to take his networking site to other cities, but even though Wonkette has lost interest, the Washington City Paper has attracted scrutiny to the site again with a juicy new exposé.
posted by jonp72 on Jul 12, 2007 - 83 comments

The Illustrated Guide to GOP Scandals
posted by trinarian on May 14, 2007 - 44 comments

Network Hosting Attorney Scandal E-Mails Also Hosted Ohio's 2004 Election Results --...more than ample documentation to show that on Election Night 2004, Ohio's "official" Secretary of State website -- which gave the world the presidential election results -- was redirected from an Ohio government server to a group of servers that contain scores of Republican web sites, including the secret White House e-mail accounts that have emerged in the scandal surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's firing of eight federal prosecutors. ...
posted by amberglow on Apr 23, 2007 - 66 comments

"Then my photography started to shift; everything had to be very clean and Republican, straight and perfect... Everything is staged and controlled... It's the complete opposite of war photography."
War photographer Christopher Morris's new exhibit and book: "My America".
posted by matteo on Sep 27, 2006 - 20 comments

the most maritally challenged crop of presidential hopefuls in American political history --meet 3 leading GOP candidates for 08. We've already read about Hillary's sexlife (or lack thereof), but will the double standard hold? ...if the top three Democratic presidential hopefuls each had extra-marital affairs in their backgrounds, it stands to reason that Republicans would have something to say about it--and if the past is any guide, those concerns would find their way into the papers. Will the same happen when it's about the "party of family values and morality"?
posted by amberglow on Jun 20, 2006 - 84 comments

Hilarious website showing one mans passion for drawing conservative themed art. The real gems are in the archive. My personal favorites include "Team W" and these creepy Reagan ghost ones [1] [2]. Don't forget his epic comic The Patriot.
posted by DougieZero1982 on May 18, 2006 - 58 comments

Rollback. Media critic Jay Rosen rises above the McClellan/"shake-up" foofaraw to put several pieces of the puzzle together and show how the Bush administration has significantly altered the long-standing relationship of the press to the White House. (More from Rosen here.) Another piece that fits: Donald Rumsfeld's bold, frequent, and rarely-challenged assertions that the American press is being expertly "manipulated" by Al Qaeda "media committees" in Iraq and Afghanistan.
posted by digaman on Apr 20, 2006 - 19 comments

"Don't worry Mr. President, we have Kansas surrounded." Warrantless searches: they're not just for wiretaps anymore. U.S. News and World Report probes the Bush administration's covert drive to conduct physical searches of American homes without court approval.
posted by digaman on Mar 19, 2006 - 52 comments

So if you run the CD in your personal computer, by the end of it, the Minnesota GOP will not only know what you think on particular issues, but also who you are. --a cd being sent out to home by the Minnesota GOP is polling people who use the cd, sending their personal info, including name, address, and phone, among other info, back to party headquarters. No privacy policy or statement identifying what the cd does is visible anywhere: ...As far as I could tell, nothing tells you that the answers are about to be e-mailed or otherwise transmitted to the Minnesota GOP. So you finish, and then the phone rings. "Hello, Mr/Mrs. Voters, it's Joe and I notice you support gun control and the marriage amendment, would you like to donate some money to us?" That might startle the person who may have thought he/she was viewing the presentation in the privacy of the computer room. ...
posted by amberglow on Feb 28, 2006 - 80 comments

Bush administration tries to silence NASA's chief climate expert James Hansen from granting interviews about global warming. Meanwhile, a new study by Australian researchers confirms that global sea levels are rising, and may make island nations like Tuvalu and the Maldives uninhabitable by the end of the century. [via RawStory]
posted by digaman on Jan 28, 2006 - 40 comments

The (Broken) Triangle: Progressive Bloggers in the Wilderness. The Huffington Post's Peter Daou, whose dour forecast of how Bush and lazy media would spin away the NSA scandal proved prescient, on why "netroots activists" can't get traction: "It's slow-motion-car-wreck painful, and most certainly NOT where the left's triangle should be a half decade into the new millennium, as the Bush-propping machine hums and whirrs, poll numbers rise and fall, Iraq bleeds, scandal dissolves into scandal, terror speech blends into terror speech. The landscape is there for everyone to see, to analyze. Enough time has elapsed to make the system transparent. It is dismaying for netroots activists to see the same mistakes repeated..."
posted by digaman on Jan 13, 2006 - 19 comments

Bush in the Bubble. Newsweek's analysis of the man who is possibly "the most isolated president in modern history."
posted by digaman on Dec 13, 2005 - 47 comments

The Nexus of Evil So it seems as though the Chairman of the Colorado College Republicans (Jay Bob Klinkerman, no really, no kidding, that's his name) seems to be the one responsible for the removal of three Democrats from a Bush Social Security Sideshow. For some reason, and possibly it was always the case, all roads in this administration frequently lead to back to the same places, with the same names. What do all of the high profile actors in the current GOP have in common? Some sort of activity or affiliation with either the College Republicans or Young Republicans. If you are wondering about the names - how about Karl Rove, Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist, Ralph E. Reed, Jr., Tennessee Gov. Don Sundquist, Lee Atwater, and the central organizer, Morton Blackwell. College Republicans have been the footsoldiers for the right since the Draft Goldwater campaign, and have been rewarded for their service throughout the Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush#41 and#43 . You can also find their fingerprints all over the various thinktanks, the direct-mail industry, and fundraising. I strongly recommend taking some time to read up on the history of the College Republicans (PDF).
posted by rzklkng on Apr 28, 2005 - 43 comments

"The president was cautious the president was prudent the president did what a commander in chief should do. No matter how you try to blame it on the president the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?" Rudy Giuliani blames the troops for the current missing explosives scandal. (340K wmv file). Can we finally stop talking about this hack as a viable candidate for national office?
posted by jpoulos on Oct 28, 2004 - 31 comments

Becoming what you hate : Nathan Sproul, case study in moral relativism on the Religious Right "former head of the Arizona Republican Party and of the Arizona Christian Coalition....Sproul is connected with the Republican National Committee-funded voter registration organization, Voters' Outreach of America Inc." - Sproul's firm is accused of fraud and the destruction of voter registration forms. He also failed to pay his workers and his office rent. Rick Perlstein, in the Village Voice, comments on the Sproul scandal : "Both sides are not equally bad, and any reporters who don't recognize that conservatism's very core has become shot through with a culture of mendacity should turn in their press badge..... It used to be that we could count on the conscience of conservatives to protect our democratic institutions."
posted by troutfishing on Oct 22, 2004 - 37 comments

The increasingly spotty record of the GOP's involvement with voter registration companies. This is a follow-up to Tueday's Nevada thread. If you registered to vote for the first time this year as anything but a Republican you should probably check to see if your registration was properly filed... you know, just to be on the safe side.
posted by clevershark on Oct 14, 2004 - 16 comments

Dissent is patriotic. "I'm a pro-choice, antiwar, antideficit Republican," says Senator Linc Chafee (R-RI). But his party affiliation is not stronger than the deep ideological gulf between the conservative and moderate wings of the GOP. Today, Sen. Chafee announced that he will not support George Bush's bid for re-election nor vote for him in November. Already there are rumbles of a party defection that might quash hopes for a GOP hold on the U.S. Senate. Remember this guy? "I understand the feelings that he has," Mr. Jeffords said. "I'm going to be talking to him, so I'm not going to say any more. I probably shouldn't have even told you that."
posted by PrinceValium on Oct 4, 2004 - 21 comments

State of the Union scorecard. The president will deliver his State of the Union address on Monday night. Tompaine.com makes it easy to keep score at home. (via TPM)
posted by jpoulos on Jan 17, 2004 - 8 comments

As you may have heard, long term FBI Agent and Chinese double-agent Katrina Leung was charged yesterday. What you might not have heard, if, say, you only read the CNN story, was that Leung was a prominent Republican, who probably did a good bit to subvert the campaign finance reform effort. However, this isn't being covered by ABC, CNN, Newsweek, the New York Times, or pretty much anyone with any name recognition, as TalkingPointsMemo reports. Funny how potential sabotage isn't worth mentioning in these fast times full of SARS and terror, no?
posted by kaibutsu on May 10, 2003 - 32 comments

The neo-Confederacy movement is a potent force in the Republican Party in today's South, as Trent Lott's comments about Strom Thurmond demonstrate. Trent Lott has neo-Confederate ties, as does John Ashcroft who praised Jefferson Davis in an interview with the Southern Partisan magazine. Associated with the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans, adherents of the neo-Confederate movement can even buy T-shirts gloating transforming the Republican Party into Abraham Lincoln's worst nightmare.
posted by jonp72 on Dec 15, 2002 - 71 comments

Want to talk about GOP? Not in the WSJ! The latest WSJ internal style guide has banned the use of GOP (Grand Old Party) as a reference that too few would be familar with. Republicans seem to find it amusing, considering their domain name, however. I'd just been speaking about this to a colleague a few days ago when someone at lunch asked what a GOP was. Do the other mediums follow suit? Is this as big a deal as some publications using the term "homicide bomber" instead of "suicide bomber?"
posted by djspicerack on Dec 2, 2002 - 34 comments

Are We Witnessing A Republican Implosion? The Los Angeles Times has three GOP contenders for governor violating Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment by attacking fellow Republicans. In traditionally Republican Virginia, the Washington Post says a Democrat is well on his way to becoming governor next week. In New Hampshire, Roll Call describes what is to be a very bitter primary against an incumbent GOP senator. And finally, the Robert Novak says the GOP is abandoning its candidate for governor in New Jersey. (More Republican News via Political Wire.)
posted by flip on Oct 29, 2001 - 12 comments

McCain considering whether to leave GOP Self-explanatory. Not exactly breaking news, considering that the National Journal reported the same (a tidbit also reported on the Web's Orvetti.com). It is, however, the first time I've seen the "rampant speculation," as journalists like to put it, make for a headline article in a major newspaper. McCain advocate William Kristol may be the person to watch here, since he increasingly seems to advocate a sort-of Teddy Roosevelt-like ideology. Oh, intrigue. Goodie.
posted by raysmj on Jun 1, 2001 - 33 comments

What's the right answer? FEMA's plans to use the Army to quell serious civil disturbances that might crop up during the Republican Convention almost certainly violates Posse Comitatus... but can the Army National Guard cope with the stuff? And can it chop to FEMA in the first place?
posted by baylink on Aug 1, 2000 - 3 comments